Walking around a shop full of CNC mills, lathes, centerless grinders, a metrology lab, and special metal treating equipment, it's obvious that engine valves are not a commodity item in the NASCAR, NHRA, and F1 worlds.

Xceldyne Technologies, Thomasville, NC, is arguably the world leader in high-performance valve train part production and in the machining of other racing components. It has invested wisely and significantly in the manufacturing capability to produce titanium valves for the finest engines in the world, producing hundreds of valves per day every day. For Nextel Cup engines valves are changed out after every race, every weekend. Valve train parts include titanium valve locks, valve seats, retainers, guides and other ancillary products that support the valve.

Other parts produced are fuel pumps, cam drives and various prismatic engine and suspension components on vertical and horizontal milling centers in production plus CNC milling in the research and development department.

Rapid Expansion

In the last three years, the plant has expanded to 35,000 sq ft, and all the equipment is less than 4 years old. In all, the company is operating 55 CNC machines to accomplish its work, supported by a state-of-the-art metrology lab.

With that kind of demand for its products, Xceldyne went looking for a way to get more production out of its machining centers. One of the bottlenecks it identified was measuring or touching off tools on the machining centers to measure offsets. When the machines were doing that, they were not making chips.

Production time was lost, Xceldyne estimated, perhaps as much as 10% of the machine time. Ten percent of a 2-shift day could be up to 2 hours of machine time.

“We went to the IMTS show with the intent of finding ways to improve the efficiencies on the job-shop side of our business,” said Eric Gale, Milling Group Leader. At IMTS, Xceldyne visited Zoller and learned about the Smile tool presetter.

The Zoller Smile

A few months later, taking delivery of the Zoller Smile, Xceldyne decided to install it right next to the machining center cell where it could support the shop’s production milling. Zoller came to the shop to train the crew for several days on-site and then Xceldyne was off and running.

A universal, non-contact, vision-based presetter and measuring machine, the Smile is designed to be quick to learn and very accurate. It can handle tool diameters to 600mm and lengths to 800mm. Measurements are repeatable to ±0.002mm with a display accuracy on the 12” TFT color display of .001mm—which is a big help when the crew at Xceldyne is inspecting insert edges for damage and wear.

The Smile is provided with the Zoller saturn set software, which is designed for small to mid-sized shops and can store data on 300 different tools. An intuitive GUI walks the operator through the measuring process. The software provides automatic edge recognition in all four monitor quadrants and can measure length, diameter, radius and two angles on each tool.

The Zoller vision system includes a telecentric lens and dynamic crosshairs, which has proven to be a big help to Xceldyne because it quickly allows the operators to precisely measure and set the cutting tools without the possibility of operator error, which can often be the case with projector-type systems. The measuring counter displays the actual value in real time.

Easy Operation

In operation, the operator puts the holder in the high-precision spindle and can index it in 90° increments and clamp it through a membrane keyboard. Zoller provides adapters for all tool holding systems, although Xceldyne is using mostly CAT taper tooling. A convenient one-hand operating handle lets the operator slide the camera into position to view the tool.

Most of the tools on the machining centers at Xceldyne need to be preset to .020-.030” to start, and some jobs require a 30-tool complement to complete a part. The company soon found that once it set each tool, and each tool was dead-on, much less time was required for job setup.

The presetter is a particular help in setting a boring tool. Previously, the company would adjust a boring tool and touch-off, then make trial cuts, then reset it. According to Eric, “With the Zoller Smile, a preset tool will cut within .001” of the preset dimension instantly. And when we need to make a change, the offset is available from the Zoller and can be downloaded to the machine tool directly and accurately.

“The thing I like about it above the other benefits is that it gives us the ability to make setup sheets off of it,” Eric added. “You can detail your tools very accurately, include setup notes, and include type of toolholder used and tool lengths. So when we re-run a job, we already have the tooling detail, making setup much quicker. That really helps us keep up with demand for our parts. And we can duplicate the parts precisely every time.”

Xceldyne, as a top-flight supplier to the racing industry, found a way through Zoller to help it produce accurate parts consistently, save machine time and improve machining productivity. With that, it looks forward to becoming an even more successful partner to racing teams around the world.

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